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In this week’s episode of all about business, Philippa shares with James Reed how she and her co-founder built a mission-driven company that is both profitable and has a significant social impact. She reveals the secrets to scaling in a complex, highly-regulated industry, from automating routine tasks with AI, to empowering educators with real-time data and insights.
Philippa breaks down what it takes to turn a passion for impact into a sustainable enterprise. She unpacks the challenges of scaling, the importance of listening to end users, and how to keep your purpose at the core while building a business that delivers both explosive growth and positive change.
Whether you're starting a company or looking for a mission-driven strategy that actually works, Philippa's journey is packed with practical insights you can borrow and scale.
01:03 the mission and impact of Arbor Education
02:14 understanding Arbor’s management information system
03:03 the growth and success of Arbor Education
06:07 the role of AI and cloud in modern education
13:23 encouraging entrepreneurship in schools
20:40 Philippa's journey: from IBM to founding schools
25:06 reflecting on the journey
25:32 building a school from scratch
26:15 opening the schools
26:43 challenges and growth
27:59 founding Arbor Education
31:44 expanding Arbor’s reach
34:38 improving school efficiency
39:55 future ambitions and reflections
Check out Arbor Education’s website: https://arbor-education.com/
Follow Arbor Education on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/arbor-education-partners/
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/chairmanjames/
[00:00:00] Phillippa: If you're running a business, you need to have all the information about your institutions available at your fingertips. That's really hard to do with the legacy system because the data's locked in a server in a school office. Only a couple of people have access to it.
[00:00:13] James: What role does data play in shaping smarter, more equitable education, and how can we use that technology to reduce the burden on schools and help educators focus on what matters most?
Teaching and learning? Joining me today on all about business is Philippa df. Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Arbor Education, an innovative ed tech company transforming how thousands of schools across England operate day to day. With deep experience in scaling mission led organizations, Philippa shares practical insights on the future of school technology.
The power of data informed policy and what it takes to build impactful public-private partnerships in education.
[00:00:55] Phillippa: Whether you talk about the cloud or AI or any other technical revolution, schools [00:01:00] are way behind how you would expect to work in a business, right? So the way that we might exchange information using Google or Microsoft or whatever you're using.
Schools have only just caught up on that because of the pandemic.
[00:01:10] James: What does Arbor education do and what are the problems you're seeking to address?
[00:01:14] Phillippa: Our mission is to really transform the way this work gets done in schools. So we are not about curriculum, we are not about giving teachers more ideas about what to teach, but we are about to taking all of that admin off their plates.
[00:01:26] James: They must love you. I mean, 'cause I always hear that teachers are overburdened by admin.
[00:01:30] Phillippa: You are the CEO. You can't access that data easily, and so you don't really know what's going on and therefore you can't improve what's going on.
[00:01:37] James: What are the transformations that you see as possible?
Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. Every episode I sit down with different guests of bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in [00:02:00] their field and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture.
[00:02:15] James: Well today on all about business, I couldn't be more delighted than to welcome Philippa Dith, um, from from Arbor Education. Um, Philippa is co-founder of Arbor Education. Um, she's also founded two schools in the London Borough of Hackney. And, um, she is, um, the Chief Revenue Officer of Arbor Education as well.
And Philip, I, I'm gonna have to start by just asking a very simple question. What does Arbor education do and what are the problems you are seeking to address through this business service?
[00:02:46] Phillippa: Thank you. Thanks for having me today as well. Um, so Arbor is a management information system for schools, which is, uh, B2B SaaS ERP system in in tech speak, which basically means we help schools to manage.
Not just their data, but [00:03:00] all their back office working. Hang on,
[00:03:01] James: hang on. I love all those acronyms. B2B as Business to business. Business to business. SaaS Software as a service. That's right. ERP. Let me get it. Enterprise Resource. Enterprise Resource Planning System. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All right. So there's a lot going on there.
[00:03:13] Phillippa: It's like the main database. It's the main way in which you share information, get work done in the school, and our mission is to really transform the way that work gets done. So we are not about curriculum. We are not about, um, kind of giving teachers more ideas about what to teach, but we are about taking all of that admin off their plates.
[00:03:33] James: So they must love you. I mean, 'cause I always hear that teachers are overburdened by admin. How's it going Exactly. Are sales as the chief revenue officer, are they going Well, they
[00:03:42] Phillippa: are going super well. So, um, so luckily for me, but, um, luckily for all of us. We've been growing 40% plus year on year, and we've just become the market leader in the UK for a full provision of management information systems to schools.
So that means we are the main sort of supplier to the school [00:04:00] office, the school leaders and teachers on all of that information about attendance, behavior, how their parents are, communication with parents, people paying for lunch, all that kind of management of the school.
[00:04:13] James: So you are the market leader.
Well done. Thank you. Uh, how many schools are we talking about here? Just so people understand the scale of this?
[00:04:19] Phillippa: Um, there's just under 10,000 schools live on Arbor today, and we've got another thousand or so coming on board over the next few months.
[00:04:26] James: And how many schools are there in the uk? How big's the market?
[00:04:28] Phillippa: 24,000. So So you've
[00:04:30] James: got almost half the market?
[00:04:31] Phillippa: Yeah, almost half.
[00:04:32] James: And you've got half together.
[00:04:34] Phillippa: Yeah, exactly. Plenty to do. So,
[00:04:35] James: and, and is there an advantage of lots of schools being on the same platform? Do they, do they share information or not?
[00:04:41] Phillippa: Yeah, they do. So, um, so whether you are a group of schools, schools, school, work, schools work better in groups, right?
So whether that's a group of schools in a local authority, like in Hackney or a group of schools in an academy, trust. Um, they, the collaborating allows them to share resources, potentially share staff, um, and just kinda [00:05:00] share the burden of running schools, which are really, really hard things to run. Um, and so our system allows both the school itself, that information really to go from the kind of the teacher to the central leadership team.
There's often a chief executive that runs a group of schools with these sort of many tens of millions of budgets and thousands of staff. So they're really complex, kind of quite commercial organizations com Academy trusts, and that's really been the growth of Academy Trust has sort of spurred the growth of ARB as well.
[00:05:27] James: So that's where you began really? Were they the Yeah. The first ones to say, Hey, we're interested in this. Yeah,
[00:05:31] Phillippa: I mean, we started back in, um, sort of 2012, which was a kind of new era of government academies program and the free schools program. And I'm the founder of two free schools. Um, the free, that really kind of spurred a lot of innovation, you know, for good or ill, but there was a lot of change at that time, uh, in UK education.
So this
[00:05:51] James: is during the coalition government,
[00:05:52] Phillippa: uh, yeah, like coalition into it was real like some Michael Gove era of, um, and that, you know, [00:06:00] academies were sort of labor, uh, labor plans, particularly in Hackney. But, um, and it is much more political in education than I thought it would be. But this is really about kind of decision making.
So, so Academy trusts have. There is full responsibility for their schools. And so to do that, like if you're running a business, you need to have all the information about your institutions available at your fingertips. That's really hard to do with the legacy system. That's still, you know, nearly half of the schools in England still use because the data's locked in a server in a school office.
Only a couple of people have access to it. If you are in a central team, you are the CEO. You can't access that data easily, and so you don't really know what's going on and therefore you can't improve what's going on.
[00:06:41] James: But your system is different because you use, and this is key, I believe, the cloud.
[00:06:45] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:06:46] James: And people can then dial it up.
[00:06:47] Phillippa: Yeah. And I mean, whether you talk about, uh, you know, the cloud or AI or any other technical revolution, like schools haven't, you know, schools are way behind how you would expect to work in a business, right? So, you know, [00:07:00] the way that we might exchange information using.
Google or Microsoft or whatever you're using. Um, schools have only just caught up on that because of the pandemic, which kind of made everyone realize why cloud access is so important because you don't have to be in the building to do things. But still not everybody's there. And we still are sometimes having to reassure customers that it's okay to use and access their data online, right?
So that it's secure and that easily accessible and those things. So. Let alone would you like to use AI to transform how you run your school? Like that's good. We've, so how you getting on with that?
[00:07:34] James: Are people doing that? Yeah,
[00:07:35] Phillippa: there's, well, there's starting. What are the transformations
[00:07:37] James: that you see as possible?
[00:07:38] Phillippa: Um, so we launched, um, AI to all of our customers in a few different ways. So we have a little talk called Ask Arba that allows you to use like natural language questions to start to query the data so you don't have to build. A complex data report, you can just ask. So
[00:07:54] James: what sort of question? Like
[00:07:55] Phillippa: how am I, uh, what's the attendance rate for boys in my school today compared to the [00:08:00] national average?
And you could type that kind of question. Or how many days has
[00:08:03] James: James Reed missed this term sort thing. Exactly. Or you could be that specific. Maybe
[00:08:06] Phillippa: too many. And how is James doing compared to all the other James? This is really alarming,
but I can see very helpful for teachers. You
[00:08:13] Phillippa: are on time today, so don't worry.
Thanks for pointing that
out to our listeners. And so were you,
[00:08:18] Phillippa: um. And then, um, and then back in the summer we launched something called Auto absence, which, um, is a AI agent based, but it's really, uh, again, for attendance for a parent to ring the school to say, actually James is sick today. He's not gonna be in, in the old model, a school business.
You know, an admin in the school office would have to listen to that message, write it on a post-it note, enter into a system, do 20 other things. And if there's 30, 40 kids absent and there's a huge problem with absence in England. Still post pandemic since the
[00:08:51] James: pandemic. Yeah. Really,
[00:08:52] Phillippa: really, really problematic.
If you're not in school, you know nothing else is gonna happen. And so making it easier for [00:09:00] parents, not only to tell their school that their kid might not come in that day, but also for the school to do something about it, is really crucial. And so auto absence takes that message. It kind of triggers some workflows to allow.
The school office to go from something that on average was taking 90 minutes to now take 15, 20 minutes, which means they can start speaking to parents more quickly and actually having better dialogue with parents to bring that kid back into school. Right. So they
[00:09:26] James: would they'd call the parent back, would they?
Yeah.
[00:09:27] Phillippa: So they can then like, you know, rank by problem and get in touch with that parent instead of just listening to messages and not being able to do anything about it.
[00:09:36] James: So that's one good example of Yeah, how the system supports schools.
[00:09:40] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:09:40] James: Have you got some others you could share?
[00:09:43] Phillippa: I think, I mean, parent engagement is a really big thing.
So there's over 3 million parents now use Arbor app, um, each day, ABA app, Arbor Apps on that. So what do they do on that app store? Uh, they pay for lunch. They see, you know, whether James was late or not, they can buy lunch
[00:09:59] James: on there.
[00:09:59] Phillippa: Yeah. [00:10:00] So there's a big kind of payments processing, uh, parts system as well.
So we're also, I guess in sense the, that will take percent. Um,
[00:10:07] James: for school lunch, they, they don't, you manage them to go, apple doesn't take a second. Oh good. The school please say
[00:10:12] Phillippa: please do. Um, the, um, but you've got Apple and Google Pay, um, and it means it's easier for parents to kinda stay, stay in touch with school, um, and for schools to see which parents are actually engaged with the messages.
So schools send out text messages, emails, letters, and lunch bags and all of that stuff. It's really hard for them to stay in touch with the harder to reach parents. Now we've got, again, sort of AI driven translation. So if you've got a school where there are four major languages, which is like not abnormal in certain parts of the country, you can really quickly translate messages and send on the app.
Yeah. And so everybody's getting things in the format that makes most sense to them most quickly.
[00:10:54] James: I had no idea. This is amazing. So this is sort of informing parents in real time what's going on? [00:11:00] Yeah, exactly. With their children at school.
[00:11:01] Phillippa: Exactly. Um, I think the other thing that,
[00:11:04] James: um, I mean I have to ask, are there other competitors doing this?
[00:11:07] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:11:08] James: Yeah.
[00:11:08] Phillippa: There there are. I'm not gonna name them on this podcast. So funny. No, I Wasn was gonna ask you to do that, but there is, there's plenty of choice in the market though. Don't There is choice. Yeah.
[00:11:15] James: So,
[00:11:16] Phillippa: yeah. Um, and I think the other thing for us, like any platform is making sure that where there are other applications that, you know.
Apps that might be like curriculum content for teachers that they can work really well with Arbor. So Arbor's kind of the main platform, but you can buy it in other systems and connect with our system and
[00:11:35] James: do. Right. So, so, so the curriculum would be on a different
[00:11:37] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:11:38] James: Right.
[00:11:38] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:11:39] James: Yours is the sort of administration information.
[00:11:42] Phillippa: Exactly.
[00:11:42] James: Management,
[00:11:43] Phillippa: exactly
[00:11:44] James: right. What else can it do?
[00:11:46] Phillippa: It can. So if you are the CEO of Academy, an Academy Trust that has 40 schools, which is sort of an, that's a lot. That's a, is it? Well, yeah, that's kind of the optimum size probably for you to be able to know who all of the head [00:12:00] teachers are or have enough budget to be able to start to kind of centralize a bit, maybe get some economies of scale.
If you are in that role, you can see in real time what's happening in all of your schools in Arbor, and that just works on day one, so you don't have to. Employ, you know, a data scientist. When you say you
[00:12:17] James: can see in real time, what, what would you be looking at the, so
[00:12:19] Phillippa: you can see again, head count. I use attendance 'cause it's a neat, the data is really good quality, but you can see how attendance is doing, you know, how
[00:12:30] James: what pupil and teacher attendance.
[00:12:32] Phillippa: Yes, both. Exactly. And not only for your school, but also how that compares to the national picture as well. So, because we've got a big enough set of data now, and this is one thing that comes from the benefit of Arva being. A major provider is that we can offer really good statistical benchmarking data back to school leaders.
So I can see what's my free school meal boys attendance today compared to the national picture compared to schools like me this morning. And if I'm seeing, hey, there was a big football match [00:13:00] last night and like loads of the kids stayed up late to watch it and now they're all late in today. Is that just in my school or is that in all schools and is that something I should act on or something?
I just have to.
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You mentioned that you went to an unusual school [00:14:00] yourself. Yeah. Which seemed to throw out a lot of entrepreneurial energy and entrepreneurs. Yeah. And it is interesting to me that this thing to you, because a lot of our guests on the podcast who are entrepreneurs Yeah. I think it's fair to say, did not shine at school.
I said that quite openly and and that's often a pattern. Yeah. And I'm thinking. You know a lot about schools. You see a lot of data.
[00:14:23] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:14:23] James: What, what needs to happen for schools to encourage more entrepreneurs? Because these people make a huge difference to our society and to the future of our economy, and, and we want more entrepreneurs, not less.
[00:14:35] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:14:35] James: What's going on? What could be done to make that more likely?
[00:14:38] Phillippa: I mean, I guess to be, um. The entrepreneurial spirits probably there's been way too far too many books written about what that means. But for me it's sort of confidence, your ability to speak about whatever it is that you're excited about and bring other people along with you.
And to a certain degree, being confident before it's finished. So you know, your products won't be [00:15:00] ready on the day where you have to sell your product. So you've gotta be able to kind of project that. What schools, um. Do quite well potentially is teach you chemistry or a lot of facts or you know, some dates in history or potentially how to spell quite well, although that even doesn't seem to be a focus anymore.
But what they don't do so well is teach you to really speak confidently. I think that's something that you get, you know, if you go to public school in England, that's exactly what you expect to come out with. But for most, um, state school kids, they're not getting that kind of support. And I was, uh, you know, I was at school, had exactly the same experience as them.
As another free school founder. Uh, but he had also gone to drama school, so we both had the same chemistry lessons and same maths lessons, but his outside school extracurricular kind of allowed him to get that stage presence, which ultimately allowed him to stand up in front of groups of parents and start a school.
He's now started a university. I think this is kind of real ability to just speak confidently, whether that's in your [00:16:00] first job interview or. On a stage or to parents in a local community center as I had to do for the school. Like you, you can be taught those skills and, and often children are not taught them and they're sort of, you know, you inherit them if you are lucky to grow up in a household where your parents speak to you like that.
But,
[00:16:17] James: so you might be good at maths, but if you can't communicate yeah, it's not gonna carry you very far. That's always saying Exactly.
[00:16:23] Phillippa: You're not gonna get a job in a bank if you're brilliant at maths, but you can't articulate. Why it is that you're excited about it. So it's so that, um, there, there's a big focus now on Ori in schools.
Um, and
[00:16:34] James: so it's called Ori Ori. What's that mean? That's your
[00:16:37] Phillippa: ability to speak really, really to a rate. Yeah.
[00:16:39] James: Yeah.
[00:16:40] Phillippa: Um, to hold a
[00:16:40] James: room.
[00:16:41] Phillippa: To hold a room, yeah. Which is, um, I think is not just about being a great after dinner speaker, but being able to kind of go in and ask for what you want or to articulate what you might be good at or what you are interested in doing.
And, um, and that takes practice.
[00:16:57] James: That's not in the curriculum.
[00:16:59] Phillippa: Uh, it's [00:17:00] not, they can steal, they, I can't speak, which is an irony
[00:17:03] James: across,
[00:17:05] Phillippa: I know that I was never taught. Oy, you get your message across. Keep going.
So, um,
[00:17:10] Phillippa: you, um, some schools are putting in place programs to really drive OC so to have teachers engaged in, um, bringing students to speak about their work as much as.
Write it down to debate and to defend their work in arguments. And I think, I work with a lot of people who have had creative education, so I had a scientific degree. I didn't ever have to do that kind of, uh, crit. Whereas you talk to architects or, uh, creatives, people who've studied fashion design, they have to present their work and talk about it, uh, in front of their peers.
I think that kind of thing. Having to defend yourself verbally. It's a pretty useful day-to-day skill, but it's not something that very many people get the chance to learn at school.
[00:17:59] James: Yeah, it's interesting and more and [00:18:00] more important I think, as technology advances, because computers even talk, you know?
[00:18:04] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:18:05] James: So to be able to communicate well verbally.
[00:18:07] Phillippa: Exactly. I think this the, um, one of the things that AI is forcing us to do is to think about how we ask questions. So you are a professional interviewer, so you're getting really good at asking questions, but most people dunno how to articulate a really good question that gets them.
To prompt the AI to give them the thing that they're looking for. And so you've gotta learn how to speak or to query in a really different way as well. And that's a new set of skills we all have to learn.
[00:18:34] James: I think that's quite exciting because it almost goes back to the beginning when all the stories were sort of told.
Yeah. Around the, the, the sort of fireplace and
[00:18:41] Phillippa: Yeah, exactly. And,
[00:18:42] James: and, and the history was an oral history.
[00:18:45] Phillippa: I think that's one really optimistic view of what does AI mean. It means we can get back to talking to each other more because we are not having to just deal with the paperwork. You can actually get back to conversation and kind of creative discussion as well.
So I grew up in [00:19:00] rural leicestershire. My mom and dad ran a pub, my mom's especially, was quite entrepreneurial. She'd had a few different businesses and things and um, and we, uh, I was going to a local primary school and they just sort of changed how they were gonna run the school. And so she was looking for somewhere else for me to go to school because I mean, I was basically a total s swat even at the age of six or seven.
Right. Um, and so, um, she started looking at this goal, and it's called TW Cross. It got started by two. Retired head teachers, so they'd been head teachers in Birmingham. They've moved to Lester Shear, bought this old vicarage and they'd realized that like lots of local kids, farmers, kids, and various things that were all going miles away to go to school.
So they started bringing them in and I think they started in like 19 80, 80, 89. Um, maybe a little bit earlier. And, um, and literally they would teach, you know, she would teach history and Latin and he would teach chemistry and maths. And then they sort of evolved and hired a few other teachers over time.
And then by the [00:20:00] time I joined that school, um, there was the vicarage and then they bought a little cottage down the road and they bought a little house across the street. And so, and now almost the whole village is the school. It's kind of amazing. It's become this really kind of serious institution. At the time, you know, our English lesson was in, uh, the headmistress mother's cottage.
Um, and they'd moved her bedroom, so we had our English lessons in there, right? So it was really kind of like being in a, in a country house, but very family and, and very entrepreneurial. Um, and as a result of that, there are. At least four ed tech founders and two school founders that come from that same school, from that village ship.
And not because we set up an alumni program to like do no, but just like coincidentally, um, one of them, well, not coincidentally, is it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. With the, I guess it was in, you know, we thought it was okay to just like, set up a school in a kitchen and, and the free schools program, um, [00:21:00] was.
Kind of exactly that it was about, so you,
[00:21:03] James: so you then followed the example of these two head teachers who taught you Yeah. A bit later and set up, well you said two schools. So tell me about that. That was in Hackney, was it?
[00:21:11] Phillippa: Yeah, in Hackney. So, um, so I, um. Studied natural sciences at Cambridge, sort of expected that as a result of that, someone would just show up and give me a job.
And that's obviously not what actually happened. I kind of, I'm not
amazed. Why not? Yeah, I know.
[00:21:22] Phillippa: I dunno. Um, so I was like back in Leicestershire thinking, what the hell am I gonna do with a physics degree? Um, and I thought this is like 2002, I thought I'll go and work in it because that, you know, it's a bit sciencey, it's a bit commercial.
Um, it was extremely oncall. Um, and I joined IBM in the graduate program in quite a technical role. Then I trained in sales. I was a channel manager, and then I moved into the management consulting team in IBM. So I was doing that. And then, um, I've been there for about nine years. Got pregnant, was on my very well paid maternity leave.
Um, um, when my baby was born, I nearly died the week after. And I think you nearly [00:22:00] died. I nearly died. I had a big blood clot. Right. And I think that made me kind of think, do I really wanna keep having my life in the way? Do I wanna go back to this corporate role? You rather epiphany. Yeah. I had a big epiphany.
Yeah. And I'd always been interested in teaching, you know, science teaching, maths teaching. And the free school program started around that time and I was talking with a friend who was a violinist and we were kind of having a sort of fantasy conversation about, well imagine if we started a school where I would teach maths and physics and she would teach, you know, Russian and violin and.
Then we met a third person, um, uh, Andreas, who had written a sort of 50 page version of what he thought one of these schools could look like. And so we all kind of met really at the right time from different angles. Um, and so he and I worked really closely to take that forward, um, to get all of the community engagement.
[00:23:00] So, um. So my friend Sharmaine, whose book is just behind me, she and know one of our former guests, former guests, breed former, yeah. So she, so she
[00:23:06] James: was there as well. Well, was she, my school
[00:23:07] Phillippa: is across from her shop, her first shop.
[00:23:10] James: Oh, okay. So a lot of entrepreneurial energy in this area. Exactly. So it'd
[00:23:13] Phillippa: be like with my baby, she'd be with her baby going, that's where, where can I go find loads of mums?
So we'd be like getting loads of forms and going in, you know, getting people to sign up and say they'd send their kid to a school. The first school that we wanted to set up was a secondary school, and that's really because we just thought that was, there was a bigger need for a different kind of a high school in Hackney, so it wasn't about our kids.
It was much more about building, building something meaningful. Um, which turned out to be really, really hard. Um, but we had this kind of very strong music focus, uh, a slightly longer school day. So there was more time to kind of do music but also, you know, do your maths, do your homework. School. School. So, so, so you said, so
[00:23:53] James: this was the secondary school, so you did a primary and a secondary school?
Yeah, we
[00:23:56] Phillippa: did the secondary school first.
[00:23:58] James: And why was it really hard? I mean, [00:24:00]
[00:24:00] Phillippa: I'm
[00:24:00] James: not, I'm not suggesting it shouldn't be. Yeah. But I wanna understand what was hard. Well,
[00:24:03] Phillippa: so the free schools program was like to total cowboy land, right? So the government, the Department of Education led by Michael Gove basically said, we think community groups, charities should be able to take public funding and set up a school.
And you can come to us and basically pitch your idea. And if we think it's good enough and you've got enough community support, then we'll back it. So we wrote what then became sort of 500 page proposal. Mm. Got thou a thousand, I think 1200 signatures from parents and local businesses and support and so on.
Pitched it to the department for education and they said, yeah, great. You know, you're an impressive bunch and we think this is gonna work really well. Hackney's an area that needs a bit more. So far so good. So far so good. So that was all great. Um, what they didn't say was, here's how you do it. So there's, there were no guides on how you do it, so you literally had to go, okay.
Well, now we have [00:25:00] to hire a team and then we have to, so you have to hire a head teacher. So
[00:25:05] James: what did you do? What did you, who did you hire first? The head teacher. Head teacher. Yeah. That's what I'd done.
[00:25:08] Phillippa: Yeah. We had a amazing founding head teacher who, um, had sort of, sort of wanted to retire but wasn't quite ready to, in a, um, so, so she and I worked really closely together.
I sort of went back to IBMA little bit, asked for a flexible working allowance so I could work on the school. Got it. Sort of slightly rejected. And instead I asked for a sabbatical for a year, which I did get. So that paid for me to work on the school for free for, uh, for another year. Oh. Um, and
[00:25:38] James: so they gave you a paid sabbatical?
[00:25:39] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:25:40] James: For year it
[00:25:40] Phillippa: was like quarter salary or something, but still's like Right. But yeah, you were getting something. Okay. So, so IBM
[00:25:44] James: were pretty good, Britney.
[00:25:45] Phillippa: Yeah, they were pretty good. They were really good. They were, I wrote a very nice thank you letter,
[00:25:49] James: right The end. Most nice to hear that, you know, when the company does well and yeah, no,
[00:25:53] Phillippa: they really, I think
[00:25:54] James: relationship with, um,
[00:25:56] Phillippa: yeah, you know, you put in 10 years of service and you're well [00:26:00] looked after.
So I'm hugely grateful to them for all of my experiences. Um. And yeah, we had to build the building. So then we had to appoint an architect. We had to argue to be given an architect even. 'cause the department for education were like, well you can just, you know, here's a I Ident school building, which we didn't really agree with.
We had to find the land, get the DFE to agree to buy the land. Like everything, like we're starting a business from scratch. Same. But starting a school,
[00:26:28] James: finding land and getting buildings built in.
[00:26:30] Phillippa: Yeah. Hard, busy
[00:26:31] James: parts of London isn't easy. Yeah,
[00:26:33] Phillippa: it's not easy.
[00:26:34] James: Yeah.
[00:26:34] Phillippa: Um, we, um, so we've, we sort of met up with a local developer who had already had planning permission for a building and then decided and said to work with us to change that into a school.
Um, but yeah, it was slightly, hugely complicated. So, so
[00:26:49] James: this, this began in what, 2012 did you say?
[00:26:52] Phillippa: 2011? We started on that, yeah. And
[00:26:54] James: when was the school opened? When the first kids, so Theary School
[00:26:56] Phillippa: opened in 2013. September 20th, 2013 was, yeah, [00:27:00] it was way too quick.
[00:27:01] James: Too quick.
[00:27:02] Phillippa: Yeah. So we started just with year sevens.
Um, so the first year of secondary school in a temporary building was like, everything was temporary, but it was quite fun. And I think for those kids. Yeah, also a kind of incredible entrepreneurial experience. I think it got harder later on, you know, we had some staff issues and various things, and so it was kind of a struggle to maintain that early, you know, startup vibe really.
Um, and then the primary school. So Boris Johnson was selling off all of the fire stations. One was across the street from us and we sort of semi joked, oh, we could kind of get the Department of Education to buy that for us and open a primary school. And then we, I wrote them a nice email and I made a logo of the school and I put it on the fire station and sent them a picture and said, would you like to come and have a chat with us about this as a potential primary school site?
And you know, as a atmosphere was at that time, the buildings inspector came out and we had a chat, and then we put in a proposal and got the community support. Got the agreement for the primary [00:28:00] school, but which, which we then had all of our experience from the secondary school to take into the primary.
So the primary school was, and still is a really exceptional school. Um, so
[00:28:11] James: what's that called, that primary school?
[00:28:12] Phillippa: Hackney New Primary School. Hackney
[00:28:14] James: New Primary School. And the secondary school,
[00:28:15] Phillippa: it's called Waterside Academy,
[00:28:17] James: right?
[00:28:17] Phillippa: Yeah, because it's on a canal basically.
[00:28:19] James: Fantastic. So they're sort of up and running now.
Yeah. And, but I mean, it takes, what, what do they say? It takes 20 years for an overnight success or something. Yeah, exactly. So I mean, anything takes a bit of, you know, time to grow and flourish.
[00:28:32] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:28:32] James: But it was, while you were doing that, I understand that you thought we need some help with the admin.
[00:28:37] Phillippa: Yeah, exactly.
So, um. One of the things I had to buy for the school on my list was a management information system. And I thought, I think that's an ERP system. I know what that is 'cause I've done a lot of work on that in IBM. So I'd worked on the biggest ERP rollout in the world for Shell. I worked there for like three or four years doing that as a consultant and lots of other things, oil and gas, and government clients, [00:29:00] and I thought.
Whatever it is that people are selling to schools, it's gonna be shit because nearly everything else that is being sold, tech, furniture, you name it, you weren't impressed, overpriced, and it's not very good. Yeah. Um, which is a different kind of public sector procurement thing, but, um. So I was thinking, oh, you know, maybe I can make one.
I dunno how to go about doing that, but I've just made it a school so I probably can do that as well.
[00:29:23] James: Well make your own enterprise. Make your own enterprise perfect sort system. Yeah.
[00:29:27] Phillippa: And then I met James and Emil, I was introduced at, um,
[00:29:31] James: so they're your business partners then?
[00:29:32] Phillippa: Yeah. And they had started, they'd started looking.
How do you make it easier for schools to use their data? Because schools have millions of bits of data. Governors reports, department of Education reports, OSTED reports. How do you turn that into something more usable? Um, so that's how we kind of came together.
[00:29:51] James: And was it already called Arbor Education when you It was called ABO Education.
Yeah. Yeah. So that wasn't the name you chose? No. You dunno why they chose it.
[00:29:59] Phillippa: Uh, [00:30:00] it was in an era of startups having names that sounded like a bit familiar, but also like a bit odd. Oh, right. And it also sounds slightly academic and it has a nice tree. That's just what it's
like. It's Yeah.
[00:30:11] Phillippa: At the top of the ranking in the alphabet, all these things helped.
[00:30:14] James: Sounds like a tree.
[00:30:16] Phillippa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
[00:30:17] James: there was a lot of thought that went into that by someone.
[00:30:19] Phillippa: Yeah. By Jane. Yeah.
[00:30:21] James: Was it? Yeah. So that's good. Yeah. So when, when you joined them. Yeah. Um, what, how developed was it?
[00:30:29] Phillippa: Um, so I was, uh, employee number four and also customer number four as it turned out. Oh, I see.
So I thought they did a good pitch on me. I thought they'd already finished building this whole system. Oh. And I was just kind of joining
as employee. So the sales end was the head of, I
[00:30:45] Phillippa: walked this office in Westborn Park and realized, oh my God, this is it. Like I've gone from working from the world, one of the world's, you know, biggest tech companies in IBM via this school startup into this room.
Which had really nice desks and beautiful [00:31:00] lighting, but like otherwise, not very much coming out of it. And uh, you know, the product wasn't ready like dah dah, it wasn't even built. So it was a
[00:31:08] James: concept really.
[00:31:09] Phillippa: It was a concept which we then started building. Yeah.
[00:31:13] James: Right. So you were involved in the building of it as well?
[00:31:15] Phillippa: Um, yeah. I mean, I can't believe I was kind of, I'd had to do all the setup of the school, so I was kind of the one, yeah. Employee who knew what it was like to be a gu. Yeah. Who was a customer as well, which was a horrible combination. Um, you know, brilliant. If you can have a customer
[00:31:31] James: as an employee in that way, you're gonna get Yeah.
All the information you need for the, the I product. Think with
[00:31:35] Phillippa: now a more mature product, it's great, but at the time it was quite stressful.
[00:31:39] James: I bet. So you had a lot going on and a young child.
[00:31:41] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:31:43] James: So now you, you, what's your involvement with the schools now?
[00:31:46] Phillippa: So, um, I no longer run either of them. So we did sort of 10 years and then, um, there's a bit of a, like mergers and acquisitions and academy trust.
So if you are little, you really want a bigger trust to [00:32:00] take you over and kind of take on that next stage of growth. So we found a different trust to take on the schools a couple of years ago.
[00:32:06] James: Right. So, yeah. So you are full-time arbor?
[00:32:09] Phillippa: Yeah, full-time arbor, which coincided just with. We getting even busier as going through a first exit and things like that, so, yeah.
Yeah.
[00:32:18] James: So what's next? I mean, where are you gonna take it? What's your ambitions for the business? Well, the service,
[00:32:25] Phillippa: um, we, you know, we still have plenty of schools in England, um, to bring on board. Um, Wales, Scotland, you know, it's such a parochial business. Schools, schools in Lincoln share have different needs for schools in London, so, um, so we sort of go one territory at a time.
We have a couple of international customers, but I think that's, um, that's definitely part. Where are they We're looking at, um, they're all kind of small island nations, like, uh, the Isle of Man and the Cayman Islands, uh, where all the schools in that little country use, um, use arbor. [00:33:00] That gives us a chance to say, well, what does it mean to work with the government and all of that.
Yeah, jurisdiction. Interesting. So it's sort of small but interesting. Um, so more of that. I think we've, we've recently acquired a couple of other companies which provide other kind of services to schools. So we bought an HR system. So we've just, we've got plenty of growth to go with the HR system. So that's again, staff development from recruitment, pensions, and payroll management.
So that's a new kind of segment for us. Um, and we bought a really exciting business called Habitude, which is, um, a kind of workflow builder, but really school specific. And so bringing that into the main core Arbor product is a big focus for the next year or so.
[00:33:39] James: I mean, so you, so you've got multiple growth tracks actually.
Yeah,
[00:33:43] Phillippa: yeah.
[00:33:44] James: International by acquisition. Yeah. And that's, uh, that's, that sounds very ambitious. So how many people work for the company now? Uh,
[00:33:52] Phillippa: 420.
[00:33:54] James: And they, where, where are they based?
[00:33:56] Phillippa: Um. We've got a team, uh, headquarters in London. [00:34:00] The customer success and support team is in Leeds. Um, the, uh, we have a team in Lincoln through an acquisition, so an office there team in India through an acquisition, uh, Intrum, er, um, a team in Serbia and, and then a lot of homeworking.
So you, so you
[00:34:19] James: really do see sort of internationalism.
[00:34:22] Phillippa: Yeah,
[00:34:23] James: big opportunity. Yeah. So I mean, I suppose the school's a school ultimately.
[00:34:26] Phillippa: Yeah, kind of I think. Or is it the school? We really specialize in state schools, so the way that state schools interact with government funding and other government requirements, like that's where we are really strong in building that kind of big data model.
Yeah. So, um, so it's sort of cho most of state schools,
[00:34:43] James: aren't they?
[00:34:44] Phillippa: Most schools, well, no other countries, like in South America, most schools are. Very low cost independent schools that are, you know, run by a convent and you pay like a hundred dollars a month, that kind of thing. Oh, right.
I didn't know that.
So
[00:34:56] Phillippa: yeah, India, the same, there's huge groups of low cost [00:35:00] private schools.
Right.
[00:35:01] Phillippa: So yeah, we, you know, Western Europe, mostly state schools, US mostly state schools, but yeah.
[00:35:07] James: But that's still a big market. Yeah. For
[00:35:09] Phillippa: you to go. Yeah. There's plenty. So,
[00:35:11] James: but I mean, I think, I mean, you were describing the sort of pressures that schools and particularly teachers are under.
[00:35:16] Phillippa: Mm-hmm.
[00:35:17] James: Yeah. I've thought for a long time that teachers are heroes.
[00:35:20] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:35:20] James: I mean, is this, is, is this problem getting worse? I mean, is it getting, I mean, you, you see it from a different perspective to most of us. Yeah. And you're obviously trying to sort of ease some of these pressures.
Mm-hmm.
[00:35:31] James: But where are we headed with this?
Because it, it worries me.
[00:35:36] Phillippa: Which part particularly?
[00:35:37] James: Well, the, the, the, the sort of stress on schools and the Oh, and the teachers in particular.
[00:35:42] Phillippa: Yeah.
I think, um, I mean, it's not just teachers who are like slightly disengaged with their work. When there's a, all businesses, you talk to any business leader about [00:36:00] their, you know, younger staff and, uh, you know. Commitment to the career and all of those things. Like it's sort of a, a struggle to motivate people to work generally.
I think a lot of people are. Then on top of that, we've seen worried about like, is AI gonna take my job? Well, AI isn't gonna take the job of a maths teacher in an English secondary school anytime soon. But there's sort of, there's these big changes that make Yeah, I, under thought's,
[00:36:28] James: a good career in terms of it is not too exposed to ai.
Yeah,
[00:36:31] Phillippa: I think so. For sure. Um. I think the administrative burden, like no one's saying we don't need administrators in schools, but we're saying maybe some of that admin could be done by the robot so you can have a conversation with the parent instead of just doing the paperwork. So that will change. I think there is like at least recognition now that um, across, certainly across England and Scotland and Wales, that special education needs provision needs more joined up services.
[00:37:00] And I think this is an area where. Technology can really help is like bringing together not just education data, but also health, social care, police, all of that data around, particularly the more vulnerable families or children so that all of the agencies and people responsible for supporting them are kind of singing from the same Hy Hymn sheet.
So that when you come to a review about somebody's autism diagnosis or somebody's, you know, neglect at home or whatever it might be, you can much more quickly get to the root of the problem with the same set of data and take action against that in a joint up way. But I think we're only just at the beginning of that being really possible across, um, school and other services as well.
But I'm kind of optimistic that people are thinking about how to solve it.
[00:37:54] James: Yeah, there's certainly, there is a potential, uh, objective, isn't it? It feels hard to sort, [00:38:00] it feels a bit like a sort of mountain.
Yeah. But hard
[00:38:02] James: to get to the summit of, but because there's so many different sort of people involved and so much complexity around where this data's held and
[00:38:11] Phillippa: Yeah.
But in the data
[00:38:12] James: seems to be, you know, more and more important, but in a way. Harder to access.
[00:38:17] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:38:17] James: And there are lots of rules around security and privacy. Yeah, exactly.
[00:38:21] Phillippa: But all the other, all the big industries, you know, education is one, but you look at like financial services or uh, retail, all the big software vendors have had to work out how to work together really.
Because there's kind of more money Yes. Than them doing that. And having joined up ecosystem in public sector, it's not necessarily about more money, although it might be about saving money, but it's really about improved service and I think that. There were some really big monopolistic providers in probably in public sector everywhere, and they are having to kind of really change how they think and how they partner, um, because of some of the, you know, [00:39:00] not just the arbors, but the really big players as well of being forced to interoperate more.
And that means it's not a technology barrier, but it is a cooperation barrier. Um, and. That means it is easier to, you know, share data securely than it was even five years ago. Right.
[00:39:18] James: Yeah. I mean, that would really, I mean the, there's a lot of talk about improving efficiency and productivity in the public sector through these sort of development.
Yeah.
[00:39:27] James: It's yet to come to pass. I mean, I really hope it does. Mm-hmm. I mean, would you be interested in stepping to another level and looking at the whole thing? I mean, is that something ABA might consider?
[00:39:37] Phillippa: Um, I think that. That could be very interesting. Like I'm very aware like now we've got to this size that we are a real partner to UK schools and that we're, you know, a major part of the British school infrastructure and that brings a huge responsibility with it.
[00:40:00] And that's why the sort of flexible working research that I mentioned earlier, doing the research and, and presenting the results in a way that. Is on the side of teachers, but stimulates potentially not just in a debate, but bringing together the right people around a kind of unarguably pure set of information.
I think we've, we can start to change things that way. So I'm excited about that.
[00:40:24] James: Yeah, I, I can see that that would be transformational potentially. Yeah.
[00:40:28] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:40:28] James: So, so Philip, if, if I'm running an academy and using
[00:40:32] Phillippa: mm-hmm. Your
[00:40:33] James: service path, yeah. How, how does it help me access funding or support my school then?
[00:40:38] Phillippa: So, um, school funding is really based on a number of children that are in the school. That's the main, that's the main income generator. So, you know, bums on seats. So, um, we help schools to share their data back with Department of Education to kind of validate that number. I have 400 children in my school and therefore my funding is X.
So getting [00:41:00] that right is kind of the key thing. I think the second thing is, particularly in some areas of London where lots of families have left, school roles are dropping, there's some real issues there. So schools can't generally go out and sell more seats, but they certainly need to be full in order to have their full expected budget.
And so how do we help schools to, um. To better, uh, you are, you are in a better attract pupils and families. Well, making it easier for schools to communicate with parents so that parents feel better engaged, making it easier for the school teachers and leaders to run the school. If that ultimately leads to improved outcomes, again, that attracts more parents.
Making it easier for schools to run other parts of their tech or managing areas where they do save money. So on average, a primary school will save over 5,000 pounds in the first year when they move to Arbor. That's funding that they can reallocate to either [00:42:00] pupil provision or a staff salary increases, or you know, whatever they, depending on their school, uh, governance structure, whatever they want to do with it.
Like schools can, schools save money as well as improving how they work by making these kind of moves. And that's just in the first year. So then they can start to evolve how they work. So I'm not saying move to Arbor and make sure that you, you know, improve your school, uh, admissions as a result. But, you know, a better run organization tends to attract more people to it and, um, be an interesting thing for it to.
So if someone, someone
[00:42:31] James: listening was interested in finding you Yeah. Where do they go? What's your.
[00:42:36] Phillippa: So, um, so, uh, back in the day we used to have to go and visit every single school in person.
[00:42:41] James: Yeah.
[00:42:42] Phillippa: Uh, now you can meet with us online, so, but we do run a load of different events. So arbor education.com, we run Arbor Fest, which I mentioned is sort of 900,000 people coming each year to that conference.
I run a little bit like you do, but like webinars for, um, for mat leaders where we have [00:43:00] discussions about, you know, different ways of running your trust, whether that's about governance or tech or AI policies. So I'm kind of doing things like that every month as well. So there's loads of ways. So ar.com
[00:43:10] James: is the sort
[00:43:11] Phillippa: ar education.com?
Yeah. ABO
[00:43:12] James: education.com. Yeah. And, and so is obviously, you know, if you're running a school, you want it to be full because.
[00:43:18] Phillippa: That means
[00:43:18] James: it's a thriving school. Yeah. And you also get the funding.
[00:43:21] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:43:22] James: So you see yourselves as a key ingredient in that outcome.
[00:43:26] Phillippa: Yeah. Outcome. I'd like to think that a sign of a really good school is that they're using arbor.
It's like almost a, you know,
[00:43:32] James: a health
[00:43:32] Phillippa: check.
[00:43:33] James: Yeah. Yeah. And that, and that gives the information to the authorities that need it.
[00:43:37] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:43:38] James: In terms of funding.
[00:43:39] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:43:40] James: Do you think, I mean, do you think you can help schools become more efficient so the funding goes further?
[00:43:44] Phillippa: Yeah, definitely. So not just in like saving software licenses, but in how they work.
And so that's why those things like how much time do you save? How much, how much more quickly can you get information to, you know, all the decisions in [00:44:00] schools are made ultimately by the head teacher, but in an Academy Trust, they're made by the Academy Trust central team. So the head teacher has a certain level of responsibility, have a very high level of responsibility, but they don't necessarily.
Make the decisions on staffing curriculum and all of those things, a lot of that is done centrally. So the more we can support central teams to have, not just visibility, but also the ability to set standards. So within Arbor, you can set your assessment policy, for example, centrally and push that into all of the schools.
So you save huge amounts of work, but you also make sure that when a teacher enters a mark, marking your homework. That's shared in the appropriate way with all the other stakeholders that need to see that information instead of repeating and repeating and repeating.
[00:44:47] James: So I mean, this is a sort of holy grail in the public sector in a way of becoming Yeah.
More productive.
[00:44:52] Phillippa: Yeah, because
[00:44:52] James: there's not gonna be much more money is there? I mean, that seems to be,
[00:44:55] Phillippa: yeah, there's obvious. Definitely. There's definitely not gonna be very much more money. Um, [00:45:00] and I think. I mean, we want Arba to be like a joy to use, right? So that ultimately, if you're a teacher, when you open your laptop, you are thinking Cool, instead of, you know, that's this of minor, this is small.
Your real measure is going, I don't hate using this software. And in fact, it's slightly nicer to use Arba than it might be to use the thing that my partner uses to do. You know? CRM or whatever is CRM. Exactly. It's certainly nicer to use are but than some of the CRMs that I use each day. That's for sure.
So, um, so just like a little bit of joy. Mm-hmm. Um, maybe that means you're gonna be a slightly happier teacher in the classroom and that has a, you know, butterfly effect, let's say.
[00:45:39] James: By butterfly you mean as in chaos theory?
[00:45:42] Phillippa: Yeah. So like little tiny thing can have an amplified effect of them other way.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:45:46] James: And suddenly everyone's doing more work. Yeah,
[00:45:48] Phillippa: exactly.
[00:45:49] James: Suddenly lots more maths. Plenty more time for, thats something positive.
[00:45:52] Phillippa: You'll have lots of Great. And is there,
[00:45:54] James: does it work in recruitment? Does it have a recruitment?
[00:45:57] Phillippa: Yeah, so we have a aspect, we've got a [00:46:00] applicant tracking system and we are just launching job boards and things like that.
Now that's in the new, um. The new company. That's obviously very important. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think having that full lifecycle view of recruitment to then classroom performance, how that staff member is, is doing, are they being well supported? Are they getting the right training in CPD, we start to have a kind of much more holistic view of how school staff members are getting on.
[00:46:30] James: Thanks for sharing these sorts, and I had no idea that you could do all these things on the app of Arbor Education, which must be really helpful to teachers, parents, and pupils.
[00:46:41] Phillippa: We hope so.
[00:46:41] James: So, um, many congratulations on building this business so far.
[00:46:44] Phillippa: Thank you. I
[00:46:45] James: wish you success in getting the other half of the market.
[00:46:47] Phillippa: Thanks very much.
[00:46:48] James: Fantastic. And so I'm gonna ask you two questions
[00:46:50] Phillippa: Okay.
[00:46:51] James: Which I ask everybody who, who, um, visits.
[00:46:54] Phillippa: Yeah.
[00:46:54] James: Our podcast studio. And the first question, um, is what gets you up on a Monday morning? [00:47:00]
[00:47:01] Phillippa: Uh, being only halfway to taking over the whole market. I guess it'd be one of them. I think, you know, every day in Arbor is a school day.
And, um, and I like the fact that what we do is quite hard. It has a good in income and we're building, you know, a good impact and we're building a good business. So we get like. Good all round satisfaction. Um, but we are nowhere near done.
[00:47:24] James: I like that. Every day in Arbor's. A school day. Yeah. All year round.
You sound like that Athlete Daily Thompson trained on Christmas day. They've got the same mindset. I like that. And, and then, um, my last question, um, there's a question from my interview book, why you, one of what's called the fateful 15 is where do you see yourself in five years time?
[00:47:44] Phillippa: Um, well I think I'm, I'm just about to sort of change my.
Role, uh, from purely revenue and sales to a much broader commercial role. So I'll be running customer success training, onboarding demand generation. So [00:48:00] for me, like I'm almost starting a new job, uh, in, in January. So, um, I think that's gonna be really exciting because all of those areas can evolve hugely over the next five years as we grow the business as well.
I have this kind of future fantasy about being a business school professor, but I think I have to have a PhD or have written a book or something before I get there, so I'm putting that off for a bit.
[00:48:19] James: Oh, I know plenty. You've done neither of those things. Yeah. Cool. So don't put, don't, don't hold back.
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